Da Bears. Da cold. And: a new tag!

Last Friday, the thermometers here in Chicagoland dropped below zero degrees.  Farenheit.  The good news was that I had a heavy jacket ready to go.  It kept me nice and toasty, even though I had to fill a gas tank in the deep freeze.

Super.  Spiffy.  Genius.

The bad news was that it was a Cleveland Browns jacket.  I spent all day assuring the cashiers that, yes, I did have my orange Brian Urlacher jersey ready to go at 1400 Sunday afternoon.  Well, it was, but I ended up wearing my super-spiffy Bears polo shirt instead.

Gotta dress properly on Sunday afternoon, don't ya know.

Anyway, it occurred to me that several of my football posts have involved uniforms and shirts, so now the blog gets a new main category for fashion.  As before, these will concentrate on the sometimes awful things athletes wear on the field, and things fans wear to games, but it's still fashion.

---

Like all right-thinking Chicago Bears fans*, I was sad to see them lose last night's NFC title game to that terrorist front NFL team from Wisconsin. Among the numerous failures from head coach Lovie Smith and quarterback Jay Cutler, the 21-14 loss was the most painful to endure.

These are from last season, but they would've fit right in yesterday.

First, there's Cutler's showing.  I'm not talking about what he did on the field.  That mess came as no surprise, given that the Packer defense had previously vexed his betters  and caused the firing of two head coaches.  It's Cutler's behavior after his injury-triggered benching that turned his performance into an epic FAIL.  Instead of standing by his teammates and providing encouragement, he spent most of the second half sitting on the bench, alone, with his head hung low.  Maybe the producers at FOX Sports were just messing with us Bears fans, but their images of Cutler on the bench are those of a quarterback who has lost his team.  It was backup QB Caleb Hanie who rallied the Bears and rocked the Packers on their feet.  He, not Jay Cutler, almost turned a blowout loss into a legendary game.

And Hanie would've done it, too, if it hadn't been for that meddling head coach of his.  On the final drive, Hanie had his players lined up for a classic power sweep against a confused and unprepared Packer defense.  Just as Matt Forte made the turn on a devastating third-down power sweep (oh, devastating irony!), the whistle blew, stopping the play.

Lovie Smith, Super Genius, had called a time out.

Instead of helping the Bears, that pause gave the Packer defense time to reorganize.  Even worse, Smith changed his team's call into a disastrous pitch play to Chester Taylor that lost three yards.  The next play was a desperate fourth-down pass that the Packers promptly intercepted, sealing the Bears' fate.

Aaarrrrrgh.  D'oh.  Crikey.  It was Cutler and Smith at their worst, at the worst possible time.

Oh, well.  I was expecting a 4-12 season from this group, so I'm happy the Bears got this far.

* Now there's a redundancy!

---